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purejuiceSince the '60s, since Stokely, since The only position for women in SNCC is prone, the argument has been a masculinist one, that the political is not personal, and that human rights, genocide intervention and the like fall into what they like to call soft policy areas.
The feminist argument, it seems to me, has always been that the personal is the political and cannot exist without it.
Two persuasive examples from the NYT today.
As for the defeat of the Clinton plan in 1994, Mr. Clinton, in a new interview in Esquire magazine, blamed presidential politics.
“And we now know, and I’m surer of this than anything: We just couldn’t do it as long as Bob Dole was running for president,” Mr. Clinton told the magazine. He said that Mr. Dole was “really good on health care for a Republican” and that the two had mapped out a strategy for compromise.
“Then,” Mr. Clinton said, “he gets Bill Kristol’s famous memo that says, you know, ‘If you let Bill Clinton pass any kind of health care bill, the Democrats will be the majority party for a generation, and you can forget about your presidential hopes. Your only option is to beat anything. Kill it off.’ ”
Mr. Dole followed the advice, declaring back then that “there is no health care crisis.”
Now, in response to Mr. Clinton’s comments in Esquire, Mr. Dole said politics “on both sides” played a role.
“President Clinton was covering his political bases and so was I,” Mr. Dole said. “He lost Congress in 1994 and I lost the presidential race in ’96. I assume health care had some impact in ’96.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/health/policy/12dole.html?scp=2&sq=bob%20dole&st=cse
I've always admired Bob Dole, who in his 80s helped found the Bipartisan Policy Center, and always thought that Bill Clinton is pretty much a scumbag. I always think of Bob Dole as that political touchstone character, Johnny Cornhusker. Who is neither a centrist Democrat douchebag nor a Republican fascist Christian, but a horse trader in the tradition of LBJ, who, after all, did get the Voting Rights Act through Congress.
Learning some of the less virtuous details of his beloved grandfather’s life was difficult at times, Mr. Thompson acknowledged. Perhaps the worst, he said, was realizing how “driven by petty animus and jealousy” Nitze could be, as when he turned on a once close friend, Paul Warnke, President Jimmy Carter’s arms negotiator. Nitze orchestrated the leak of misleading information about Soviet soldiers in Cuba at a critical moment in the debate over an agreement that Mr. Warnke negotiated. The Senate failed to approve the treaty, known as SALT II.
“It shows his tactical brilliance and little bit of a dark side,” Mr. Thompson said.
Thirty years later, Gen. Nikolai Detinov, one of the Soviet arms negotiators, told Mr. Thompson that the failure to ratify SALT II in the summer of 1979 hardened the Kremlin’s position; if it had been approved, the general said, “we would not have gone into Afghanistan."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/books/12hawk.html?scp=1&sq=nitze&st=cse
On the Ozymandias angle, Nitze's grandson went to the SAIS building named after the cold warrior and asked for his papers. The janitor knew where they were. Behind the boiler in 60 cartons, where they'd lain untouched since they were dumped there, in the building named for their author.
The feminist argument, it seems to me, has always been that the personal is the political and cannot exist without it.
Two persuasive examples from the NYT today.
As for the defeat of the Clinton plan in 1994, Mr. Clinton, in a new interview in Esquire magazine, blamed presidential politics.
“And we now know, and I’m surer of this than anything: We just couldn’t do it as long as Bob Dole was running for president,” Mr. Clinton told the magazine. He said that Mr. Dole was “really good on health care for a Republican” and that the two had mapped out a strategy for compromise.
“Then,” Mr. Clinton said, “he gets Bill Kristol’s famous memo that says, you know, ‘If you let Bill Clinton pass any kind of health care bill, the Democrats will be the majority party for a generation, and you can forget about your presidential hopes. Your only option is to beat anything. Kill it off.’ ”
Mr. Dole followed the advice, declaring back then that “there is no health care crisis.”
Now, in response to Mr. Clinton’s comments in Esquire, Mr. Dole said politics “on both sides” played a role.
“President Clinton was covering his political bases and so was I,” Mr. Dole said. “He lost Congress in 1994 and I lost the presidential race in ’96. I assume health care had some impact in ’96.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/health/policy/12dole.html?scp=2&sq=bob%20dole&st=cse
I've always admired Bob Dole, who in his 80s helped found the Bipartisan Policy Center, and always thought that Bill Clinton is pretty much a scumbag. I always think of Bob Dole as that political touchstone character, Johnny Cornhusker. Who is neither a centrist Democrat douchebag nor a Republican fascist Christian, but a horse trader in the tradition of LBJ, who, after all, did get the Voting Rights Act through Congress.
Learning some of the less virtuous details of his beloved grandfather’s life was difficult at times, Mr. Thompson acknowledged. Perhaps the worst, he said, was realizing how “driven by petty animus and jealousy” Nitze could be, as when he turned on a once close friend, Paul Warnke, President Jimmy Carter’s arms negotiator. Nitze orchestrated the leak of misleading information about Soviet soldiers in Cuba at a critical moment in the debate over an agreement that Mr. Warnke negotiated. The Senate failed to approve the treaty, known as SALT II.
“It shows his tactical brilliance and little bit of a dark side,” Mr. Thompson said.
Thirty years later, Gen. Nikolai Detinov, one of the Soviet arms negotiators, told Mr. Thompson that the failure to ratify SALT II in the summer of 1979 hardened the Kremlin’s position; if it had been approved, the general said, “we would not have gone into Afghanistan."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/12/books/12hawk.html?scp=1&sq=nitze&st=cse
On the Ozymandias angle, Nitze's grandson went to the SAIS building named after the cold warrior and asked for his papers. The janitor knew where they were. Behind the boiler in 60 cartons, where they'd lain untouched since they were dumped there, in the building named for their author.
